Ethnic Foods You Just Don't Get

I don’t get tamales.

I’ve tried. I’ve really tried. I’ve been eating them since I was a tiny little kid. See, my Dad’s family moved into Mexico to run steel pipe fabrication and welding businesses in the 50s and 60s. Most of them intermarried, and a bunch stayed down there. My dad speaks perfect spanish, and used his bilingual and bicultural leanings in business when I was a kid. As a result, I lived in the Rio Grande Valley twice, San Antonio multiple times, Corpus Christi, etc. I’ve had my Mexican aunts and great aunts make me real tamales of all kinds. I’ve had the “best” tamales from every place in each of those cities growing up. I’ve been gifted hundreds over the years from other friends and relatives. My family even had a special tamale making machine in our garage at one point to custom make them as gifts for my dad’s clients.

And to be very honest, I’ve been disappointed by literally every single Mexican style tamale I’ve ever had in my entire life. Of every flavor, meat, sauce combination.

I just don’t get it.

I’ll allow that the fake south american kind cooked by chefs from Chicago that are not made of masa and are steamed in a banana leaf can be passable. Stephen Pyles in Dallas had a tamale for a while that would just kind of come with other stuff as a side. It was edible, but I’d never order it.

What is a tamale, really? Is it not a Mexican hot pocket? Isn’t it basically the same thing? Starch based outer layer filled with meat and spice mix, wrapped in shell and cooked. Except the meat and spice mix is inevitably worse than that found in a pizza or ham n cheese flavored hot pocket. The masa is so preposterously inferior to a tortilla that I just can’t make sense of it. It’s wrapped in a compostable waste product that smells and tastes like an old sock. I’d much prefer cooking my food in a little metallic lined cardboard holster, with a flaky bread shell that precludes any moisture from escaping the filling inside (that may be icy or like magma depending on intra-pocket location).

So please, explain it for me, commiserate, or share the ethnic food that simply makes no sense to you.

Screaming monkey brains.

Funny, I do not like Mexican food, except for tamales.

My food choices are narrow like my tastes in wine. There are many ethnic foods that I do not enjoy. Heck, I’m Cuban, and yet don’t like rice and beans (worse, I’m liberal and don’t speak Spanish).

Sushi is my nirvana.

Of the items I’ve actually run across…

Balut. Got an invite to a friend’s in-laws. It would have been rude not to eat it. Yucky, to me.

Bird’s nest soup. Ate it out of politeness, but the ingredients grossed me out.

Casu Marzu. It was right there in front of me. Smelled it, eye balled it. I would have barfed if forced to try it.

Shark fin soup is not very good tasting, to me. Now it has ethical elements, as well. Tried it in the distant past - it’s a little too collagenous.

I Don’t care for tamales either. This will probably send Alfert into orbit but I don’t like those Cuban sandwiches, what’s the big deal with those?

Bologna and mayonnaise on white bread. Just disgusting. Worse with American cheese.

Michael

Andouillette.

I’m spoiled, my first tamales ever were the best I’ve ever tasted. Super fragrant pork filling, corn, and…green olives. I’ve never found anything like them outside of chiapas. I even asked Rick Bayless one time when I saw him and he’d never heard of that combo. There are a lot of mediocre tamales out there, but good ones are really nice.

I’ll go with…foie gras. I know I’m supposed to like it, but I just can’t. I’ve really tried.

You don’t like eating pig intestines that still contain a hint of shit?

Haggis
Menudo
Sweetbreads

That’s just plain racist, man! Dissing a Cuban sammy is like saying you don’t like baseball and apple pie.

Do you like Media Noches?

A spicy pork tamale cooked by a Navajo woman and bought out of a cooler in the back of her minivan parked outside a federal building in ABQ cost $2 and remains one of the most amazing things I’ve ever eaten.

I love the flavors of Ethiopian food, but Injera is the nastiest stuff on the face of the earth. Like chewing on a soggy sponge soaked in moldy lime juice.

I like Mole, cabrito, nopolitos, lots of unusual ethnic food.

I can’t believe Anton thinks he’s out of the norm NOT liking Balut, who likes Balut? I’m shocked you got it down, kudos.

British food really sucks.

I’ve heard many Americans complain about food in Spain while traveling. They certainly eat differently but I like it.

Italian cookies are terrible.

British food is improving at an exponential rate. They grow/raise/catch great ingredients and have learned not to cook them past edibility. We go to London twice a year to eat.

Spain has some of the greatest cuisine in the world.

A good cantucci is a thing of beauty.

I tried this in Paris on the recommendation of a friend. Next time I saw him, I told him it tastes like shit.
He smiled and said in his thick French accent, “It’s supposed to.”

It looks so good. The salad and fries were great. Barf? How did you know?

Balut is genius self-insurance against cultural appropriation. 80% of Filipinos like it and 99.8% of non-Filipinos are afraid of it.

Natto

Lutefisk, Durian, and just about everything mentioned above except tamales, which I’ve have liked as far back as I can remember.

P Hickner